Volunteer evangelist Perry Broome, a member of First Baptist Church, Centre, in Cherokee Baptist Association, has swept his way across the United States in an effort to lead people to Jesus.
The 79-year-old singer and storyteller has been doing that ever since he preached his first revival 48 years ago and has no plans to retire. In trying to reach people, he simply follows the example of Jesus, telling a story that both relates to the person’s life and clearly communicates spiritual truth.
Broome has no idea how many people will be in heaven as a result of his efforts — and he likes it that way.
Rather than taking credit for himself, Broome prefers to tell one tearful story after another about how God’s power cleanses the dirtiest of hearts. Broome said he could write “big books” on miracles he has seen God perform in the lives of people from a former atheist neighbor to a 56-year-old teacher incarcerated at a New Mexico women’s prison.
After encouragement from a friend last year, however, Broome decided to begin keeping track of souls won through revivals, missions trips and personal contacts. In 2007 alone, there were 212.
“Perry never meets a stranger and has a heart for reaching people,” said Wendell Dutton, Cherokee Association director of missions, who accompanied him on several missions endeavors among the American Indians of South Dakota.
During Broome’s lay ministry throughout Ohio, Michigan, the Dakotas and most recently, New Mexico, he has helped either to finance or build homes for two pastors, seven churches, an outreach center for the homeless and a transitional home for former female inmates.
“There are so many talented people living under bridges because of a few bad decisions,” Broome said. “We don’t win them all, but we do everything we can.”
After the door closed on his ministry in South Dakota, Broome felt God directing him to set out on a journey with his wife, Betty, in 2003.
“At age 75, I thought I was burned out and ready to quit but God had other plans,” he confessed.
The couple began traveling west on Historic Route 66. Along the way, Broome stopped to talk with church leaders and people on the street in search of needs and ministry opportunities.
He traveled across five states before discovering God’s next assignment.
In Milan, N.M., Broome met Garland Moore, the black pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church, a multiracial Southern Baptist church.
In a building with a leaky roof and expensive rent, Immanuel Baptist had recently launched a community ministry to the homeless in downtown Milan.
Soon Broome was using his business and personal skills to not only help the church find a new building for the homeless shelter but also to pay off the resulting $57,000 mortgage in less than a year. Called the Community Outreach Center, the ministry now provides lunch, a Bible study and an addiction recovery program.
“He has meant the world to us, and I know he was God-sent,” Moore said of Broome. He explained that Broome walked through the door of the center just as he was on his knees asking God how he could possibly accomplish what He called him to do in this ministry to the hungry and hurting.
“I thought, ‘Here comes this white man who probably wants to shut us down,’” Moore said. “Instead he was the answer to my prayer. Many lives have been changed because of this one man who has a heart for God.”
Before long, Broome joined Immanuel Baptist members Paul and Trudy Crumb in ministering to men and women in New Mexico prisons. They call themselves “two Crumbs and a Broome” as they sing and preach together.
In addition to serving as an evangelist, Broome has served as interim pastor of 12 churches in Alabama and Georgia. He said God worked through the influence and ministry of the late Southern Baptist evangelist Vance Havner to call him into the ministry.
Broome has never accepted for personal use the money he receives from preaching. Every dime goes to ministry and missions through The Broome Fund, which is now administered by Immanuel Baptist.
Broome said God has provided for his family through the years by allowing him to operate a print shop and helping him make wise real-estate purchases.
“I’ve made mistakes and learned a lot,” he said. “But I realized from Revelation 3:20 that I am any man and every man is any man. That’s where the call comes from.”
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